12. Ryder
RYDER
My eyes snap open before my body fully catches up, and for half a second I’m already reaching for the side table where I left the—nothing.
Not a gun. I didn’t bring one downstairs.
I stare at my empty hand, then at the soft gray light creeping around the edges of the curtains, and hear the sound again.
Kitchen.
Alex.
Everything comes rushing back as my brain catches up to what’s going on and why I’m on the couch.
I stand too fast, and my neck complains from the couch. The monitors are still on. The scanner is low. The front porch is empty. The driveway is clear. I take all of that in before I turn toward the kitchen.
Alex stands in front of the open cabinet wearing leggings, one of her oversized sweatshirts, and my jacket pulled around her like she slept in it.
Her hair is messy, her face pale without makeup, and there is a crease on one cheek from the pillow.
She has a mug in one hand and the expression of a woman who got caught doing something illegal with dishware on her face.
“You own too many mugs,” she says.
My pulse is still trying to return to normal. “That’s not what woke me up.”
“I was being quiet.”
“You shut a cabinet.”
“Quietly.” She raises an eyebrow, begging me to contradict her.
I rub a hand over my face and step into the kitchen, careful to stop at the island instead of moving too close. “You okay?”
She looks away from me and reaches for the coffee pot. “Define okay. I’m over here trying to pick a fight with you over shutting a cabinet, so I’m gonna need a reference.”
“Did you sleep?”
“A little.” She pours coffee into the mug, then glances over her shoulder at me. “Did you?”
I look toward the couch. The blanket I never used is still folded over the back, and the pillow is on the floor where it fell sometime after dawn when I crashed.
Alex follows my gaze.
“Subtle,” she says.
“I slept some.”
“You look like the concept of sleep hurt your feelings so you rejected it and instead took a power nap.”
I can’t hide the smile or the snort that comes with her joke. “That’s close enough to the truth.”
Her mouth twitches, but it doesn’t hold. She takes the creamer from the refrigerator without asking, and watching her move through my kitchen like she belongs there hits me so hard I have to curl my fingers around the island edge.
She notices my hand.
I let go.
The McDonald’s bag from last night is still on the counter, folded down twice. Alex picks at the top seam while her coffee lightens beneath the creamer, not looking at me when she asks, “Any news?”
“Remy texted. Parker sent footage from Lucy’s.”
Her fingers stop on the paper bag. “Did they get him?”
“Not yet.”
“Ryder.”
“He left through the back after we got outside,” I tell her, keeping my voice even because lying to make it easier would be worse. “They weren’t able to get a plate or anything, but Remy’s checking street cameras.”
She nods once and takes a careful sip of coffee before grimacing slightly. Her eyes close for a second, and the bruise on her wrist peeks out from beneath my jacket sleeve when she lowers the mug.
I make myself look at her face. “He also said you need to make a statement because this needs to be official.”
The mug pauses halfway to the counter. “Today?”
“When you’re ready.”
“That’s not the same thing as today.”
“No,” I say, shifting my weight because every protective instinct in me hates the answer. “It isn’t. He wants you to come in today, but I think that you need to do what feels right for you. This happened to you, not to anyone else.”
She studies me over the rim of the mug, wary and tired. “You’re being very reasonable this morning.”
“I’m trying.” I correct her. “And you deserve to have your thoughts and wishes respected.”
“That’s alarming.” Alex drinks her coffee after adding a splash of creamer and sugar to the cup.
“Yeah,” I admit. “It feels weird from this side too.”
This time her mouth curves enough to count, and the tightness in my chest loosens by a fraction.
She turns toward the living room with her coffee, probably aiming for the couch, and I realize too late that I never put the box away.
It sits beside the coffee table where I dragged it out last night to make room for the second monitor cord.
Black archival box. White label on the side with her name written on it. I see her notice it before I can move.
The mug lowers slowly.
“What is that?” she asks.
My blood turns cold.
“Alex.”
She doesn’t look at me. Her gaze stays fixed on the label as she walks toward the box, bare feet silent against the floor. “Why is my name on that?”
I follow, but I stop at the edge of the living room. The monitors throw pale light across her legs and the hem of my jacket. “It’s not evidence.”
“That is an incredibly bad opening defense.”
“I know.”
She sets her coffee on the table with too much care, then crouches in front of the box. Her fingers rest on the lid without lifting it. “Tell me before I open it.”
My mouth goes dry. There are a dozen ways to make it sound softer. None of them are honest enough. “Articles, okay. They’re articles.”
Her hand stills.
“You kept my articles?”
“Yeah.”
“How many of them are in here?”
I stare at the back of her head, at the messy fall of her hair, at my jacket swallowing her shoulders. “Most of them.” I give her the truth, or as much of it as I can. Because I have every single article she’s ever written that I was able to find. Even the ones from high school and college.
She lifts the lid.
The first folder is the worst one for her to see because it proves the timeline immediately.
Her first byline from her sophomore year in high school.
Printed in the middle of the night in my dorm room, the date written in the corner and saved in one of those protective sleeves.
She pulls it free, and the plastic sleeve catches the monitor light.
“You kept this?” she asks.
I step closer, then stop when her shoulders tighten. “Josh sent me the link. He was proud of you. We all were.”
“That explains reading it.” She turns the page with careful fingers. “Not printing it or preserving it and storing it in a box for over a decade.”
“No.” I’m flailing internally and have no idea what to say to her. She already knows I’m obsessed. Already knows I’ve been watching her. But I’m not going to lie to her.
Her laugh is quiet and humorless. “At least you’re consistent with the terrible answers.”
I deserve that, so I take it.
She keeps going, sifting through the pieces of her writing that gave me insight into her soul.
A storm-damage piece. A holiday market article.
A profile on a retired teacher. A council meeting recap no one except maybe twelve people in town would have read start to finish.
Some are marked with dates. Some have notes in the margins, not about where she was or who she saw, but about lines I liked, details she caught, quotes she pulled from people nobody else would have bothered listening to.
That does not make it harmless.
I know that before she says anything.
Alex closes one folder and opens another. “Josh doesn’t know about this.”
It isn’t a question.
“No.”
Her head turns then, and the look on her face is worse than anger. Anger would be easier. This is fear trying to decide what shape it needs to take.
“Why not?”
I swallow. “Because he would have asked me why.”
“And what would you have said?”
“That I was proud of you.”
“That’s not all of it, though. Not your only reason for keeping them.”
“No,” I admit.
She stands with one of the articles still in her hand. The coffee sits forgotten on the table. “How long for real, Ryder?”
“Since the first one.” She already knows that I have it, because she held it in her hand. But I think hearing me say the words has to confirm her suspicions.
Her eyes close for one second.
I hate myself for that, but hating myself doesn’t undo the box at her feet or the way she’s going to be looking at me now.
“When Preston kept things,” she says, opening her eyes again, “he used them to prove I owed him. That I lied or kept a secret. That I changed from who I was. That he knew me better than I knew myself.”
“I know.”
“No, Ryder. I really don’t think you do.” Her hand tightens around the article, bending the plastic sleeve in a way that has my teeth on edge. “Because if you did, you would understand why this feels like a trap even though part of me knows you didn’t mean it that way.”
The words cut because they’re true.
I keep my hands at my sides. “I didn’t keep them to trap you. I would never do that”
“Then why? The real reason why.”
There it is. The question I knew would come the second she saw the box.
I look at the article in her hand because looking at her face might make me reach for her, and that is the last thing she needs from me right now. “Because I didn’t know what else to do with the lifetime I’ve spent wanting you.”
The room freezes.
Alex’s lips part, but she doesn’t speak.
“I knew I didn’t deserve you,” I say, forcing the words out before I can choose something easier.
“You were Josh’s sister. You were younger.
Then you were with him, and after that, you were trying to survive getting away from him.
There was never a right time to tell you the truth without making your life harder. ”
“So you kept tiny pieces of me instead.”
The way she says it makes my throat burn, because she knows every single truth I’m trying to hide behind.
“Yeah,” I answer. “I kept pieces. Articles. Photos from family parties and group activities. Things that made me feel like I still had some distant place in your life without asking you to give me one.”
She looks down at the box again. “That sounds lonely.”
“It was better than losing you completely.” Because if I had her, even once, I knew then like I know now, I’d never be able to walk away. And Alex? She’s always had the power to destroy me.
Her eyes come back to mine, and I know before she says anything that I’m not getting comfort from her. I shouldn’t. Not for this.
“You don’t get to turn me into the only thing keeping you from being lonely,” she says quietly. “I can’t be consumed and taken over by another man’s life. Never again.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I nod once, even though the answer feels too simple for the mess I made. “I’ve stayed away, Allycat. I knew that what I am…is no good for you. I’ve known it since I was sixteen and moon-eyed over my best friend’s little sister.”
Alex looks at the box for another long moment. Then she sets the article back inside with careful hands and lowers the lid. She doesn’t shove it away. She doesn’t throw it at me. I have no idea what’s going through her head, and that makes everything worse and better all at the same time.
“I need coffee,” she says.
I guess we’re done talking about it, but she didn’t run screaming. “Okay.”
“And space.”
I step back immediately. This is it. My worst fucking nightmare coming to life. And all because I told her the truth.
I fucking knew it.
Her eyes flick to the movement, the tremors that have to be taking over every nerve in my body at this point.
I need to leave. To get away from her before I break.
She sees it. She sees everything when she’s scared, and maybe when she isn’t. “Not forever,” she adds, voice tight. “Just right now. To process.”
I make myself nod again. “Take whatever you need.”
Take it all. Take everything. Just don’t leave me.
She picks up her mug and walks toward the kitchen, my jacket still wrapped around her. I stay in the living room beside the box with her name on it, the security feeds glowing over the evidence of every line I crossed and called love because I didn’t know what else to do with the truth.
At the kitchen doorway, Alex stops without turning around.
“Ryder?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you ever think if you’d said anything to me, I could love you back?”
My chest goes tight enough that breathing hurts.
“No,” I tell her honestly. “I was afraid if you knew, I’d lose even the stolen little part of you I know for a fact I don’t deserve.”
She doesn’t answer.
She keeps walking, and I let her go because this time, staying where I am is the only way to prove I heard her.